Tire monitoring and warning assemblies are normally and operatively employed upon and/or within vehicles to selectively measure an attribute of the vehicle tires and, based upon the measurements, to determine whether one or more of the tires has lost pressure or has "deflated", and to selectively energize a warning device, such as a lamp or alarm, to notify the driver and/or vehicle occupants of the undesirable tire deflation.
While these tire monitoring and warning assemblies do oftentimes provide desired and relatively accurate warning indications, they suffer from some drawbacks. For example, each of these assemblies typically utilizes a separate and initially created "learned" attribute value for each of the monitored tires. Particularly, each of these values typically arises from and/or is based upon a measurement of an attribute or characteristic of a unique one of the monitored tires. The tire monitoring/warning assembly then, as the vehicle is driven, periodically measures each tire attribute and compares each of the measured or "monitored" values with a unique one of the initial or "learned" values. Particularly, "learned" values and monitored values corresponding to the same tire are compared. Substantial differences between any initial attribute value and the respective and corresponding periodic measured values cause the tire assembly to selectively energize a deflation warning device, effective to notify the user and/or operator of the vehicle that one or more of the monitored tires is undesirably deflated. It is therefore important, in these systems, that the respective initial tire attribute values be created from measurements which are made when the tires are actually and desirably inflated, since these initial values cooperatively represent the "benchmark" or "standard" which is used to later determine undesirable tire deflation. Hence, if the "benchmark" is incorrect, then so will be the entire monitoring and warning system.
These prior tire monitoring and warning systems typically include a selectively depressible "learn", reset, or "standardization" switch which allows a vehicle driver/user to selectively cause the tire monitoring and warning assembly to create new initial or "learned" values in order to allow new tires to selectively replace the tires which have been previously monitored. This switch also typically and selectively de-energizes or "resets" the warning device.
Oftentimes, the vehicle driver/user or other occupants (e.g., children) inadvertently cause these initial "learned" values to be created when the new tires have not been fully inflated, thereby causing the creation of errant "learned" values which prevent the system from accurately warning the driver/user of deflated tires. Moreover, many vehicle driver/owners, in order to de-energize the warning device, simply depress the "reset" switch, thereby undesirably and perhaps unknowingly causing the system to create one or more errant initial "learned" values associated with and/or based upon one or more deflated or partially deflated tires which are presently causing the warning light or device to be selectively energized.
There is therefore a need for an improved tire monitoring and/or deflation warning assembly which allows initial or "learn" values to be operatively created only when the tires are properly and desirably inflated. There is a further need for a "reset" switch which reduces the probability of the undesired and errant creation of initial or "learn" values. These and other needs are addressed by the inventions set forth in this Application for patent.